Well, this is a strange story. Having already been told that we’d have to wait a further six months beyond the originally projected release date for the new Spiritualized album, it appears we’re going to have to wait even longer. The album, Sweet Heart, Sweet Light, was set for March 20th release date, but band leader Jason Pierce has other ideas.

Spin reports that the album has been delayed “a few weeks” (no actual new release date is given) despite several advance copies having been sent out to press already. Apparently the advance copies received by reviewers (not us, for the record) are not the version that will (eventually) be hitting the shelves. Pierce admits:

“I had the rather foolish idea last November that I could deliver the record that’s been sent out and keep working on the real version… I’d meet the delivery date they need for reviews and things like that and nobody would be any the wiser that I’d be carrying on with the mixing.”

Considering it’s only the mixing that has been changed, you might think that it’s not a big deal, but Pierce goes on to say that he thinks the final version will sound “quite different” and that “some bits are more realized and closer to what [he] wanted them to sound like.”

Pierce doesn’t seem to be concerned with how this will affect the reviews, since he quips that with some reviews “it’s like they’ve got a different album anyway.” I would be interested to hear what Spiritualized’s labels (Fat Possum in North America, Domino imprint Double Six elsewhere) have to say about this.

On a brighter note, Spin reports that Sweet Heart, Sweet Light (or the version they’ve heard of it) is “very good.”

My own personal reaction to this is that while it is frustrating for big fans of the band (like myself) to hear that the album is delayed, I can’t help but slightly respect Pierce’s flagrant disregard for “the way things are done” in the music industry. But, I am also dreading what having two versions of the album out there could do; with the inevitability of the reviewers’ version eventually hitting the net (perhaps sooner now this story has broken), future discussions amongst hipsters about this album will surely devolve into bragging akin to “oh but have you heard the unmixed version of the album? It’s so much better than that final version. I don’t even have that version on my iPod.”